Unrelated: Self-Conscious Computers

Yeah, this kind of blog series...
Creative Commons Bill Alldredge

Unrelated is series of posts I run on the weekends that are unrelated to the AHL, the NHL or hockey. Consider it the weekend work I put in to help entertain. It could be humorous, personal, opinionated, political, related to other sports or anything. More or less these are my "Andy Rooney" moments.

This week, at the zero hour of a long weekend, here's an opinion you've never heard before: ratings on the internet are hollow and meaningless.

There are two types of ratings on the internet. 5 stars and 1/no stars. Everything else in between doesn't exist. You have to either love a movie on Netflix or scorn it so it burns into the ground. The real rating sometimes comes somewhere in the between because the more people that five star it will become averaged with the no stars and so forth.

All the ratings options that exist on the 5 pt scale

But why does it have to be so binary? Are we so in love with the 1/5 scale that we can't think things are average? It takes the concept of quality, the real question and makes what we see as either great! or terrible. While all feedback in general comes in two flavors, good or bad, there are degrees that such extremes can't validate.

I've always been of the opinion of scaled ranking. Was it average? 3 stars. was it good? Maybe a 4. I try to reserve only the life changing good or bad for the 5s or the 1s. If you can find a flaw, don't give it a five. If you still enjoy the app in the littlest bit, give it more than a 1 when a bug crashes it.

This is at the point where the ratings are devalued as computer programs and companies are looking for more numbers, more fives when they should be looking for more feedback. They get self conscious about 4s when all it means was good but not the revolution. I've been asked why I thought the service wasn't good enough over a 4. Called at home and at work over those rankings for local services.

 You can't hop into an app without a daily ask for a rating. It devalues the system because its enforced feedback is set to the extremes and the livelihood is based upon perfect scores when there should be room for good, bad, great, terrible and mediocre.  I'm ok with not being impressed all the time, and honestly, those fives probably aren't all impressed either. I'm not impressed nearly as much by them as you think I should be.